


Viper

by griseldalafey



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Rumbelle Showdown 2015
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-25 17:03:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 21,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3818125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/griseldalafey/pseuds/griseldalafey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a cursed Storybrooke, Belle Gold is a shallow, selfish woman who's been treating her husband like dirt for the past twenty-eight years. But when Emma Swan comes to town, Belle regains her memories and realizes what she has done to the man she loves, while Rumplestiltskin remains trapped in his pre-curse spinner persona. (Round four entry)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Remembering

**Author's Note:**

> And then Viper happened.  
> As I was thinking of a story to fit the prompts, I stumbled across a wonderful prompt issued by repeatinglitanies and then everything came together like an angsty puzzle.  
> The prompts were: handmade blanket, dog, too little, too late.

When she came down to the kitchen, he was already there, preparing tea.

“Good morning, dear.” His voice was meek, brown, soulful eyes fitting over her face.

Belle hated that look. The neediness in his gaze even more off-putting than his slight, scrawny frame and his pathetic limp. It was a waste of the fine suits he wore, really. Even they couldn’t disguise what a pitiful excuse of a man her husband was.  
This morning was even worse than usual, because the night before she’d given in to his constant pleading and allowed him to bed her, despising him even more in the morning.

“Are you ever going to finish making that tea?” she snapped. “Some of us actually have to be somewhere today.”

Unlike him. He would sit idly in his ridiculous pawnshop all day, surrounded by antiques that no-one wanted to buy. Twenty-eight years they’d been married and for the life of her she couldn’t phantom anymore why.

He handed her a cup of tea, casting his eyes down, his shoulders sagging as he poured one for himself in an old, dingy cup that missed a chip, but that he insisted on using, undoubtedly just to annoy her.

Shrugging into her Dolce & Gabbana coat, she turned to him before leaving.  
“Remember there’s a party at the mayor’s office this afternoon,” she told him in a clipped tone. “Be on time and for pity’s sake, try to make somewhat interesting smalltalk. People already know you’re a bore, no need to advertise the fact.”

* * *

 

 She’d been seething ever since the mayor’s party the previous day. Never before had that imbecile managed to embarrass her more. She honestly didn’t know what was worse, him spilling a glass of expensive red wine over the mayor’s pristine white dress like an awkward schoolboy on his first date, or his pitiful, stammered apologies as he’d all but kneeled down at her feet to gather the broken glass.

She never noticed the blonde woman approaching her until she collided straight into her and her temper erupted.  “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Emma Swan, the new deputy sheriff. You might want to watch where you’re going!”

Suddenly the street spun in front of her and Belle staggered, for a moment feeling as if she was going to faint. She never noticed the woman in the red, leather jacket stalking away, almost drowning in the images that floated through her mind and came faster and faster until they clicked into place.

_Emma… Emma… Emma…_

Rumplestiltskin.

* * *

 

By the time she arrived home the memories more or less made sense.

_The Dark One trading for her… her life at the castle… slowly falling for the complicated, layered, lonely man that inhabited it… meeting Regina on the road… her impulsive kiss… his anger and attempt to send her away… her steady refusal… the budding relationship that had started after that… Rumplestiltskin confiding in her that he needed his magic to find his son… the waiting for the curse…_

Bouncing with nerves, she rushed into the kitchen, finding her husband cooking dinner. The urge to run into his arms was overwhelming, but one look at his face stopped her dead in her tracks.

He looked miserable. His face was strained and pale and the bloodshot eyes he lifted to her face radiated fear.

A fist of ice gripped around her heart as she suddenly became aware of her cursed memories, sitting right next to her new-found ones like a particular vivid reminder of a nightmare.  

Only this wasn’t a bad dream. For the past twenty-eight years she had treated her husband like dirt, belittling him, demeaning him, ordering him around like a lap dog.  
Even worse than that, because curse or no curse, she would have treated a dog better than she’d treated him.

“It smells good in here,” she said, smiling tentatively at him. If possible, his shoulders tensed even more as he shot her an uneasy look.

“Just risotto… it’ll be ready in a few minutes,” he replied quietly.

* * *

 

Dinner was immensely uncomfortable. She tried to engage him into conversation by asking after his day and telling him about hers. But he gave mono-syllable answers and continued to watch her with a wary expression.

After dinner she insisted on cleaning away the dishes, unsettling him even further by doing so and that’s when she decided she needed to take more drastic actions to show him that she still loved him.

Stepping in front of him, she wrapped her arms around his neck and slid her fingers into his hair, tugging his head down for a kiss.  
“Come on,” she urged gently. “Let’s get upstairs.”

Longing and fear warred in his eyes and with a jolt she realized that underneath the curse he still loved her.

* * *

 

She undressed him, coaxing him in a soft voice to take her clothes off too and he did so with shaking hands, his eyes wide with confusion.

“Come here,” she crooned into his ear, wrapping herself tighter around him as they settled down on the bed. He made a startled little noise and reached out to the lamp on the beside table.

Mystified, she grasped his hand into her own.  “What are you doing?”  
But then one of her cursed memories flooded back.

_“Turn off the damn light, I’d rather not watch you rut against me.”_

He gave her a stricken look and her throat constricted painfully. “Leave it on. I want to see you.”

Taking advantage of his bewilderment, she moved, straddling him and leaning down to kiss him. His lips parted hesitantly under hers and she deepened the kiss, feeling him gasp against her mouth. To her relief he soon began to respond and the feeling of his tongue caressing hers made her stomach flutter.

When she broke the kiss he let out a whimper that turned into a startled moan when she pressed her lips to his chest, peppering it with kisses. He felt so warm and smooth beneath her lips and when she darted out her tongue to lick his nipple his musky taste made her moan.  
He went rigid beneath her and when she shifted her gaze back to his eyes, she saw they were wide and uncertain, his pupils so far dilated his eyes seemed almost black.

“B-Belle…” he pleaded hoarsely, “please… just let me…”

Realizing he would probably be more comfortable if he was in control, she let him roll them over, sighing blissfully as his lean body covered hers.

She would be responsive, she vowed. She’d let him know that he pleased her, no matter what. But when his hands and lips moved reverently over her body, she quickly realized there was no need for pretense. His gentle hands sought out all her sensitive spots, his kisses making her body hum with desire. By the time his fingers slipped between her legs she was panting with want, unrestrainedly moaning in pleasure.

_“Get your hands off me… just fuck me…”_

Her climax left her dazed, but then he was inside her and she sobbed, clinging to him, feeling complete for the first time in almost three decades. His strokes were slow and steady and she could feel the pressure building again.  
“So good…” she breathed in his ear, feeling him shudder against her.

_“Will you hurry up, you pathetic fumbler!”_

He spilled himself inside her with a soft groan and immediately rolled away. Crawling after him, Belle pressed herself against his side, feeling how tense he still was.  
“Hold me?” she whispered quietly, trying to catch his eyes.

He nodded tentatively, wonderment and confusion clear on his face as he pulled the quilt over them and timidly put his arms around her.

She recognized that quilt. He’d made it for her in Dark Castle so she wouldn’t get cold if she spend her nights reading in the library.  Her cursed self had mocked and ridiculed him endlessly for insisting it should stay on their bed and her eyes stung with tears as she remembered.

She bit her lip furiously, keeping her tears at bay until his deep breathing told her he had fallen asleep. Then they spilled over, her body quietly shaking with sobs.

This crushed, trampled man was hurt because of her, because of the twenty-eight years of abuse she’d inflicted on him. It might have been Regina’s curse, but it had been her cruel words, her callous acts that had bruised him so. He was the love of her life and she had broken him.

And now that the savior had come, there wasn’t enough time to mend things between them. When the curse broke and he remembered, he’d be disgusted with her and with himself.  
He’d be utterly lost to her.

Burying her face against his shoulder she tried to hold on to this moment. She had this night, as little and as late as it was.

They would never be all right again.


	2. Nurturing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Applejacketcat prompted: Rumpel (still burdened by his cursed memories) struggles to accept Belle's attentions the next time she initiates sex.

She noticed something was wrong the moment he stepped through the kitchen door. There was something off in the way that he carried himself, all stiff and rigidly. She’d been finishing upp some paperwork at the kitchen table, but upon his entering she closed her laptop, her brow frowning with worry.

“Hey…” she greeted him, deliberately keeping her voice soft. “Are you all right?”

“Fine…” he mumbled, not really meeting her eyes. “Excuse me…”   
He made his way to the stairs, his gait haltingly, leaning heavily on his cane as he started to climb upstairs.

For a minute she sat still, trying to figure out what was bothering him and then one of her cursed memories clicked into place.  

For the last couple of days the weather had been completely ghastly, with lots of rain, chilly temperatures and a cutting wind. Weather like this always made his injured knee act up, the old wound radiating pain, causing the muscles in his leg to cramp up until his entire leg was aching. Trying to spare his painful leg as much as possible usually only resulted in over-straining the rest of his body so that by the end of the day he was sore and stiff all over.

His leg had bothered him for the entire duration of their marriage and Belle cringed with shame as she remembered the countless cruel, cutting remarks she had snarled at him about it when she’d still been under Regina’s curse. Apparently she’d never considered her husband to be as old and useless as when he was in pain.  
It was no wonder he had barely looked at her when he’d come in and had scurried out of her sight as soon as possible. No doubt he’d expected a tongue-lashing and a flood of scornful, deprecating words.

For a little while she was unsure what to do next. The last few days, ever since she had regained her memories upon meeting Emma Swan, had been incredibly uncomfortable for both of them.  She supposed her suddenly drastically altered attitude towards him made him even more apprehensive and distrustful of her than her mean words and her cold disposition had.   
He was completely unsettled by her now and she couldn’t decide if it would be kinder to leave him be or to try and show him her affection.

But right now he was in pain and hurting and she couldn’t let that stand.

Mind made up, Belle followed him upstairs. First she tried their bedroom, but aside from a discarded suit jacket on the bed she found it to be empty.  She returned to the hallway and noticed that the window in the door to the bathroom was misty. When she approached the door she could hear the soft sound of splashing water and she realized he was probably taking a bath.   
Pushing the door slightly open, she hovered on the threshold. “Can I come in?”

A more noticeable splash was heard and she winced, realizing she must have startled him.

“Belle?” He asked incredulously.

Deciding that it counted as an invitation to come in, Belle opened the door further and stepped inside.  Her husband was lying in bath, completely submerged in the water, his head resting against the marble of the tub. When she entered he frantically tried to sit up, winching in pain as he did, his eyes wide with trepidation.

 “Is there something wrong?” he asked, a note of panic appearing in his voice.

Somehow he looked even more vulnerable like this and tears choked Belle’s throat as she watched the obvious fear on his face.  Impulsively she crossed the room and knelt down next to the bathtub, reaching out her hand to pet the side of his head and coax him to lie back again.   
 He shuddered at her touch, his body complying, although he kept looking at her with a wary expression.

“Does it hurt badly?” she asked softly, her heart squeezing with worry and compassion for him.

He gave a tiny nod, winching as he did so. “Yes… it does…” he admitted, his body tensing even further as if he was bracing himself for her reaction.

Steam was rising from the tub, causing her face to flush and when she dipped her hand in the water she discovered that it was scalding hot. Biting her lip she thought for a moment, until her face brightened. “I have something that might help you…”   
Getting to her feet, she moved over to the mirror cabinets and pulled out a jar of juniper bath oil. Kneeling down next to the bath again she unscrewed the lid and unceremoniously poured its entire contents into the bath, the oil mixing with the water and filling the room with a heady fragrance.

“What are you doing?” he asked bewildered, following her movements with wide eyes.

“It’ll help your muscles relax,” she told him, reaching out to grab a luffa sponge and some body wash.

“Belle… you don’t have to…” he started to protest as she began to rub the luffa over his shoulders.

“Shhhh… just let me…” she shushed him gently. “Let me take care of you. Can you lean forwards for me? I’ll wash your back…”

He did as she requested, but as she ran the luffa over his back and neck she could feel how tense he still was and how stiff he was holding himself.

She wanted to cry, scream and tear her hair out from the misery of it all. He was her husband and she loved him so much.  But she had also hurt and broken her beloved and no matter how much she regretted it, no matter how she wanted to shower him with signs and tokens of her love now, it would never be enough.   
It would never undo the pain she had caused him.

 And yet, she couldn’t keep herself from trying.

“Please… just let me take care of you…” she pleaded, her voice constricted with tears. He gave her a startled look, his eyes softening at her distress and he leaned back against the rim of the tub again when she coaxed him to do so.

When she continued to wash his chest and arms he gradually started to relax under her ministrations until his eyes drifted shut.  Emerging her hand under water, Belle ran the luffa over his stomach and upper tights, suddenly becoming aware of how much her touch was affecting him, despite his trepidations.   
In the past days, ever since she had regained her memories, her suspicions had been confirmed on several occasions that underneath the curse he still loved and wanted her and that his hesitance around her was mostly the result of the twenty-eight years of abuse she had inflicted on him.   
That he still wanted her was now more obvious than ever and her belly fluttered as she watched his cock straining as she let the luffa stray to the inside of his thigh, eliciting a soft groan from him.

She brought up her free hand to card it through his hair, hope flooding her as he leaned his head into her touch, his hips involuntarily jerking upwards.   
“Let me take care of you…” she whispered again, letting go the luffa so that she could run her fingertips over the incredibly tender skin of his thigh.   
“Please… just let me, I want to make you feel good…”

She paused her wandering fingers, not wanting to go any further without his explicit consent. His eyes snapped open, burning with wonder and longing, his pupils almost completely dilated.

“Oh Belle… yes…. please, sweetheart…”

Her heart surged at the familiar term of endearment and she closed her hand around him, gently stroking up and down over his hard length.  He felt amazing and the way his body was arching up into her touch made it all the more gratifying.   
Bathing him, taking care of him hadn’t left her unaffected either. Just the sight of his smooth chest and his lean, hard muscles made her shiver and want to touch him all the more.

Leaning in she pressed soft kisses against the sensitive skin of his neck, drawing a harsh, low groan from him.   
With one of her hands buried in hair, her other hand giving him pleasure and her nose inhaling his warm and musky scent as she planted kisses along his jaw, neck and shoulder she dared to believe that there was still hope for them.

Gently stroking the tip of his arousal with her thumb she felt him shudder, a choked cry spilling from his lips.  

“Belle… my Belle…” Then his body went rigid for a moment before he spilled himself into the water, his body shaking with the relief.  She kept touching him gently, trying to prolong it for him for as long as she could, enjoying the way his body finally fully relaxed in her arms, his head lolling to the side until it rested against hers.

When he finally looked at her, his eyes were soft with wonder, like he couldn’t believe she was real.

“Feel better now?” she asked him tenderly.

“Very much so,” he replied, gazing up at her dazedly.

Resting her forehead against his, she smiled, feeling some of her own tension evaporating. “How about I order us take-out and we turn in early?” she suggested hopefully.

“You don’t want me to sleep in the guest room?” he blurted out.

For a second she blinked at him non-plussed and then yet another cursed memory flooded back to her, causing her heart to break a little.

 Whenever his leg had bothered him in the past, she had evicted him from their bed, not able to stand being near to her crippled, ailing husband.

“I don’t,” she replied firmly, kissing his lips gently. “Tonight I want my husband close.”

The small flame of hope that had flickered up inside of her faltered dangerously at the new, horrifying memories and she bowed her head, trying to bit back the tears that threatened to spill, not wanting him to see them.    
Her own feelings were insignificant now.   
Nothing else mattered than to ease his hurt and bring him comfort.

Warm, wet fingers trailed over her cheek and she looked up with a snap to find him looking at her with a hint of a smile around his lips.

 “I would like that very much.”

She swallowed, her throat loosening somewhat in relief.  
 “I’ll order Chinese then.”


	3. Holding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endangered Slug prompted: One week later and Gold is still suspicious of Belle.

She woke in the middle of the night to the feel of arms wrapping themselves around her waist from behind, a warm body snuggling against her back.

Instantly awake, she held herself completely still, scarcely daring to draw breath as his hands moved over her. His fingertips grazed the undersides of her breasts and she stifled a moan, heat flooding her body.

She couldn’t make a noise or move an inch, because if she did she would wake him. And if he woke up to find himself touching and holding her, he would flee.

 Eventually his wandering hands settled on her stomach and she released the breath she’d been holding. His hands were warm and comfortable, pressed against her like this through the lace of her nightgown and she wished they could be like this always.

It had been a week since she had recovered her memories and it had been the most painful, tormenting week of her life.    
Her smart, wicked, funny, sweet Rumplestiltskin was utterly ruined by the curse and had left an anguished, fragile man in its wake.  A man who was so terrorized and crushed that he barely dared to look up any longer to meet her eyes, who cowered the moment she entered the same room, his shoulders tensing as if he was expecting a blow any moment.

Shifting through her cursed memories, she had found no recollection of ever having been physically violent towards him.  But that hardly made matters better since she had a sheer overwhelming amount of memories of herself being verbally abusive towards him.

So now he cringed the moment she opened her mouth and no matter how much she tried to keep her voice soft and her tones soothing since she had her memories back, she never managed to ease the fear in his eyes.

Quite the opposite in fact. The harder she tried to show him kindness, the more effort she put in trying to show him how much she loved him and how sorry she was, the more wary he became of her and the more he tried to pull away.

From her cursed memories she knew that Belle Gold had often ignored her husband for lengthy periods of time, sometimes going weeks without talking to him. As hurtful as that was in itself, those periods of the silent treatment had probably given him some reprieve as well.

After twenty-eight years of having been tormented by his wife, he had learned that being noticed by her irrevocably meant that he would be on the receiving end of her insulting, degrading, spiteful tongue and her cutting, hurtful remarks.

Her efforts to get closer to him and draw him out probably only intensified his fear and reluctance around her.  After years of begging for scraps of her affection, he now tried to avoid her as much as possible. He averted his eyes whenever she looked at him, barely responded to her whenever she tried to engage him in conversation and took the first opportunity to flee the room he got.

Perhaps it would be better if she gave him more space, if she stayed clear of him, but every time she saw the hurt and sadness in his brown eyes, or noticed the nervous twisting of his hands her heart seized until it almost burst with the need to soothe and comfort him, to wrap him up in her arms and her love until he believed her again and loved her back as unreservedly as he once had.

Once his eyes had shown with wonderment and affection whenever he had looked at her. Once his breath had caught with happy anticipation every time she touched or hugged him. Once his voice had been warm and soft when he spoke to her.

Even when he had been under the Dark Curse, back in the Enchanted Forest, he had been able to love her and accept her love, even if he’d had his doubts and insecurities then.  

Now, because of Regina’s curse and suffering years of malice at her hands, he had lost nearly all ability to love or to be loved. His heart was bruised, damaged and almost destroyed and she didn’t know how to even begin to make it right.

* * *

 

Only when he was asleep she saw glimpses of the Rumplestiltskin as she remembered him. In his sleep he still sought her out and she now lived for those short moments when he wrapped her in his arms and held her as if he still trusted her, as if he still wanted to be with her.

She felt him bury his nose into her hair, pulling her even closer agains this chest, his arms tightening around her and she bit back her tears and tried to commit these moments to her memory.

Because eventually he would wake up. From his sleep in a matter of hours and ultimately from the curse itself.   
 And then he would loathe her for what she had done to him and leave her, the last of his love evaporating from his heart and being replaced by hate and darkness.

The echo of how he had loved her once was still palpable when he was unconscious with sleep, but soon that would be gone too.

So as he entwined their feet and mumbled something inaudibly into her hair, his warm breath caressing the skin of her neck, she placed her hands tentatively over his and held on to her Rumple for as long as she still could.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cel prompted:  
>  Belle finds their "chipped cup" and reminisces about the time she broke it; Gold finds her holding the cup; Belle asks him if he knows anything about it.
> 
> Takes place the morning after Belle regained her memories.

When she came down to the kitchen, he was already there, preparing tea.

“Good morning,” she said softly, the scene in front of her so achingly familiar that it made her chest hurt.   
He looked up, a storm of emotions whirling in the depths of his brown eyes.

“Good morning, dear,” he greeted her, like he had done every morning for the past twenty-eight years. “Would you like some tea?”

“Tea would be lovely,” she answered with a smile, sitting down at the counter, still dressed in her blue silk dressing gown. His eyes flickered over her face briefly before he looked down again. His gaze was softer than the night before, but still fraud with uncertainty and fear.

She watched how he prepared the tea, carefully soaking the tea leaves into the boiling water and adding just the right amount of sugar. There was something oddly soothing about this small, domestic scene, but still Belle couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was off, although she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. It wasn’t until he placed two glass tea cups on a tray that she realized it.

“Where’s your cup?” she asked bewildered. For twenty-eight years he had drunk solely from that white porcelain cup with blue patterns, much to the aggravation of her cursed self.

Their chipped cup… Belle smiled fondly to herself as she remembered how she had dropped it on her first day at the Dark Castle and how terrified she’d been of the repercussions, until he had merely shrugged the incident of.    
Their chipped cup that had survived the curse and the almost three decades of their disastrous marriage.

“Won’t you rather drink from your chipped cup? I know it’s your favorite,” she asked again, looking imploringly at him.

But to her shock, every trace of color drained from his face, his eyes growing dark with horror. The semi-comfortable atmosphere between them instantly evaporated and was replaced by an icy tension.  

“Belle… please…” he croaked, his voice heavy with grief. “Not again… please…”

Before she could make a reply, before she could reassure him or even begin to understand what had gone wrong, he had stalked out of the kitchen. Taking her scorching hot tea between trembling hands, Belle wrecked her cursed memories, trying to discover what had happened, her eyes filling with tears when the memories came rushing back.

* * *

 

_“You useless, pathetic, IDIOT!” she hissed venomously once they were back inside the house, rounding up on him._

_“Belle… please… it was an accident,” he pleaded. “I said I was sorry…”_

_“Do you enjoy it?” She demanded, her tone turning frosty._   
_“Do you get some kind of sick pleasure out of it? Making me look like a complete fool in front of Regina and Albert?”_

_“No!” he replied horror-struck, his lips shaking. “No, of course not Belle. I did not mean to spill wine over Regina’s dress… I lost my footing, that was all…”_

_“Because you really don’t need to try so hard,” she continued as if he hadn’t said anything at all. “I have you for a husband. Do you know how much they pity me?_   
_How much they lament my situation?_   
_Being shackled for life to a crippled, worthless, excuse of man like you?”_

_He shrank back as if he felt every word like a lash._

_“I’m sorry…” he whimpered. “I truly am… I’ll apologize to Regina again tomorrow and then we can put it all behind us… How about I make us some tea for now, hmm?”_

_He was already making his way to the counter when she exploded._   
_“Tea!?” she shrieked, her anger flaring once again. “That’s all you have to say? You miserable, stupid-…”_

_Too angry to get the words out, she whirled around and snatched the chipped cup out of his hands, ignoring his panicked gasp._

_“You are pathetic!” she sneered, her voice laced with contempt. “With your broken cup and your broken limbs…. you. are. nothing!”_

* * *

 

Still in her dressing-gown and barefoot, Belle ran outside, noticing that the Cadillac was already gone from the driveway, meaning her husband had already left for work.   
Walking around the house, she made her way to where the garbage container stood.

After her terrible rant at Rumplestiltskin, she had thrown away the chipped cup and forbidden him to get it back.

With her heart pounding in her chest, Belle opened the lid of the container, slightly recoiling as the stench of rot and waste hit her nostrils.  It had been days ago since she had thrown the chipped cup out. To her recollection the container hadn’t been emptied since then, but she couldn’t be certain. Either way, if it was still in there, it was now buried under a ton of leftovers and trash.

Not caring what kind of picture she made, going through the garbage dressed in a Victoria Secret dressing gown and with a hundred dollar manicure she dived straight in, desperately moving the trash around, trying to ignore the muck that quickly stained her fingers.   
Just as she began to despair she was never going to find it, her fingertips brushed against a jagged edge and she could have cried with relief when she pulled the cup up. Thankfully it hadn’t been damaged any further by its stay in the container and cradling it in her hands she carried it back into the kitchen.

Soaking it in boiling water and cleaning it meticulously she brought it back to its original, pristine condition before placing the cup back on its usual spot near the sink so her husband would spot it easily once he got back.

* * *

 

 When he got home that evening, she was sitting on the couch, twisting her hands nervously as she waited for him.  She could tell the exact moment he noticed the cup from the sound of his breath hitching. Turning around, a lump formed in her throat as she watched him lift the cup reverently in his hands, his long fingers stroking the delicate handle and the small corners of the missing chip.

He turned around to face her, his eyes wide with wonder, tears gleaming in the corners.

“Belle?” he asked breathlessly.

“I never should have thrown it out,” she offered quietly. “I’m sorry… and I never should have said the things that I said.”

“It’s… no matter…” he replied, looking startled and she could have laughed at the irony of it, had her heart not been crushing with guilt.

Wondering if he remembered anything at all and if that was why he had been holding on to the cup for all those years, she asked tentatively:   
“Why does that cup mean so much to you?”

“I’m not sure… “ He replied, looking bashful. “It… helps me remember…”

“Remember what?” she asked, holding her breath, hope flaring up inside her.

He frowned deeply as if he was trying very hard, but then his shoulders dropped.  “I guess I forgot…”

“It’s all right,” she soothed him, grateful that they had taken this small step towards each other. “It will come back to you.”

And wether or not she longed for that moment or dreaded it she refused to contemplate in that moment.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sfiddy prompted:  
>  Maybe Belle has friends who she complained about her husband to, and she gets a call from one while Rumple is in the room? She has to demonstrate that she will not abuse him in public or private, thus beginning the process of changing the relationship dynamic?
> 
> I took the general gist of this prompt and went with it. Takes place about three weeks after Belle has regained her memories. Also, this story is completely AU by now and I run amok with the original time-line.

The doorbell rang early that morning, just as they were having breakfast together.

It had taken her a week of patience, gentle coaxing and a bit of flirting, but she finally had him to the point were he would just sit down with her and share a meal without looking at her as if he feared she was about to tear into him at any second.

She enjoyed the flirting. His shy, startled responses reminded her more of the Rumplestiltskin she had known in Dark Castle than anything else.  Even then he had become horribly bashful whenever she had teased him or shown any interest in him.  Underneath all his bluster and magic, he had been so vulnerable, even then. So convinced that he was completely unlovable.

Feeling somewhat chagrined that someone was intruding on their sparse, peaceful time together, Belle got to her feet with a sigh, cursing herself when she saw him tense up. Purposely walking past him, she carded her hand through his hair and pressed her lips to his cheek.    
“Be right back.”

Tightening her dressing gown more securely around her, she made her way to the front door and opened it to find Sheriff Graham Humbert and his deputy standing there. Belle hadn’t met Emma Swan again since the first time she had literally ran into the Savior and regained her memories and once again she felt the odd thrill of something far deeper than magic stir in the pit of her stomach.

“Good morning,” she said, as composed as she could manage. “What can I do for you?”

“We’re investigating the disappearance of two children,” Graham told her, his voice curt. “Their names are Ava and Nicolas and they’re siblings.

“How awful,” Belle replied, genuinely distressed. “For how long have they been missing?”

Graham looked surprised at her reaction, his eyes scrutinizing her as he watched her closely.

Meanwhile, deputy Swan answered her question. “They were caught shop lifting yesterday. I took them home, but this morning they didn’t show up at school. When we checked the house they were gone.”

“You think someone took them?” Belle asked, her insides churning with worry.

“It’s more likely that they run off because they were afraid,” Emma replied. Have you seen them? Or see anything out of the ordinary?”

“No…” Belle replied thoughtfully, wrecking her brain. “I can’t think of anything… but if you wait here, I’ll ask my husband. He has a shop on Main Street… he might have seen something…”

Just as she was about to go back inside to fetch him, Emma turned towards Graham. “Would you mind handling this? I’m going to move on to the next house.”

When she returned with her husband in tow, it was only the Sheriff who was still standing there.

“Good morning, Mr. Gold,” Graham started pleasantly. “We’re looking in to the disappearance of two children, a brother and a sister named Nicolas and Ava. Did you notice anything out of the ordinary yesterday?”

Next to her, her husband became rigid at the question, his breathing growing hollow. “No… I have not… Nicolas and Ava you say?”

Upon seeing his distress, Belle resisted the urge to wrap her arms around him.   
 “Ava is the girl with the long braids, remember?” she reminded him gently.

“Mrs. Gold,” Sheriff Graham interfered, his tone cold. “Perhaps it would be best if you were to go inside and let me talk to Mr. Gold. I have a few more questions I’d like to ask him.”

For a moment Belle was taken aback by his sharp tone, but then she remembered.

* * *

 

_“Mrs. Gold, it might be best if you let your husband take you home now!” The Sheriff’s distaste over her conduct was clearly written all over his face as he addressed her._

_“You think that?” Belle Gold slurred, leaning towards him as far as she could without toppling off the barstool, giving him ample opportunity to look down her cleavage._

_“Yes, I do. I think you’ve had more than enough to drink,” the Sheriff answered determinedly._

_Behind him, her husband was looking at her pleadingly. “Please Belle…” he tried to coax in a trembling voice. “Won’t you come home with me?”_

_She laughed, harshly and cruelly at that, throwing her head back for good measure. “Come home? With you? Why in the world would I want to do that?”_

_“Belle… please…” he attempted again, taking a stumbling step towards her. “_

_No!” she cried indignantly. “I won’t let a weakling like you tell me what to do!”_   
_Every ounce of contempt and malice she could muster she put into those words, watching in satisfaction how her husband crumbled before her eyes, his shoulders hunching under her hard gaze._

_Turning towards Sheriff Graham, she ran her finger over his chest before looking up at him through her eyelashes. “Why don’t you take me home instead?_ ”

* * *

 

 Good grief, it was no wonder the man was looking at her with barely concealed disgust and Belle could feel her cheeks burning with mortification.

“I’ll -uhm… I’ll go back inside then,” she stammered, taking a step back and giving her husband an encouraging smile. But to her surprise, just as she was about to turn around, she felt his hand close around her wrist.

“Don’t leave…” he asked, a slight tremor in his voice. “I don’t want you to…”

Warm, glorious relief swept through her and for a second Belle felt she could cry with happiness. He still wanted her. Whatever there was ruined between them, it wasn’t all gone.  But then she noticed he was looking as apprehensively at her as he was looking at Sheriff Graham and her heart sank.   
 Perhaps he was only afraid she would cut him down later if he agreed with the Sheriff.

“What can I help you with, Sheriff?” he eventually asked, bracing himself. “We’re trying to track down Nicolas and Ava’s father,” Sheriff Graham explained. “The only starting point that we have is this compass.”    
From the pocket of his uniform jacket, he produced a small, copper compass and handed it over to Gold.    
“Do you recognize this?”

Taking it from him, he carefully examined the object, his face tight with concentration. “It was purchased at my shop,” he said eventually.

“Do you know by whom?” Sheriff Graham asked.

_“Yes…”_ her husband seemed surprised at the notion himself and Belle’s breath caught in his throat as she realized that he was remembering something from beyond his cursed memories.   
Somewhere deep inside him, her Rumplestiltskin was asserting himself.

“Michael Tillman…” He said slowly. “It was Michael Tillman who bought the compass…”

“Thank you,” the Sheriff replied. “You’ve been very helpful. I’m sorry for intruding on you so early in the morning.”

After waving him off, Belle closed the door behind them and turned around to face her husband, smiling widely at him. “You did amazing!” she informed him.

He appeared baffled at her words, even more so when she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him soundly.  

Once she pulled back, he continued to stare at her with a dazed, befuddled expression.

“Come on,” she said, grasping his hand and pulling him back towards the kitchen. “Let’s finish our breakfast.”


	6. Wooing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nevermore913 prompted:   
> Yes, hello, I'm here for the Viper prompts! I'd like to see how they met and ended up getting married.   
> An anon asked:   
> Were they married before the curse hit?

_Belle Gold didn’t wear her wedding ring. The mere thought of physically wearing proof that she was for all intends and purposes, bound to a man she despised so wholeheartedly being too much for her to bear._   
_There was exactly one picture of their wedding on display in the living room and only because of her husband’s insistence.  Sometimes she caught herself staring at the ludicrous image and wondering. In the picture she was wearing an expensive, custom made dress, was her hair was exquisitely styled and her make-up put on by a professional beautician._

_Yet she looked into the camera with a carefully arranged, bored expression on her face, her spine stiff and her eyes blazing with fury._   
_Next to her stood her husband, dressed to the nines in a tailored suit with perfectly matching accents. He was leaning on his cane and gazing earnestly into the camera. His free hand was resting on her hip and even twenty-eight years later, Belle Gold still remembered how the touch had made her skin crawl._

_He had barely changed in the twenty-eight years that had passed since their wedding day. Neither had she for that matter and so Belle Gold wondered.  If he had always been this disagreeable, this pitiful, then why had she ever married him?_

_What on earth had possessed her?_

* * *

 

To Belle it hardly felt like they were living in the pink, Victorian house together. There were her rooms and his spaces, but everything was meticulously divided as if the two of them were nothing more than boats, occasionally sailing past each other in the night.

So she taped a family planner to the refrigerator door and urged him to write his appointments down so she would know what was going on his life and he would know what was happening with hers.

The living room of their home was a sparse, uninviting environment, more a showroom than a home really, so she filled vases with red roses to brighten the place up and found a set of silk gold, embroidered pillows for the couch, hoping they would jog his memory.   
For the same reason, she asked him to move his spinning wheel into the living room, trying to re-create some of their moments in the Dark Castle when he would spin and she would read her book in the evening and they had be so happy together.

* * *

 

_Belle Gold despised reading. At the very start of their marriage her husband had tried on a few occasions to gift her a book, something old and dusty from that ridiculous shop of his and she had informed him coldly that he was an idiot if he thought she would welcome such a worthless object before unceremoniously tossing the book into the bin._

_Storybrooke’s Public Library had been closed for as long as she could remember and she and Regina laughed themselves silly every time someone tried to issue a petition to the town council to have it reopened again._

_After her marriage she took over the landlord business from her husband, her harsh, aggressive approach ensuring that nobody even dared to consider to fall behind with the rent._

* * *

 

 Belle thought it was outrageous and a shame that the library was closed and that there wasn’t a single decent bookstore in town.  More extraordinary, aside from a few hardly used books on cooking, there wasn’t a book to be found in the entire house.

So when one day a large crate of antique looking books was delivered to the house, she almost squealed with delight. Lugging the heavy crate into the living room, she sat down on the rug and opened it reverently, picking up a very early edition of Charles Dicken’s ‘ _Oliver Twist’_ , losing herself in the story within minutes.

“Oh Belle… I’m so sorry…” Her husband’s anguished voice made her look up and she found him standing in the door, a contrite expression on his face.

“They were meant for the shop, but they got delivered here by accident. I have arranged for Dove to pick them up within fifteen minutes.”

Belle swallowed painfully, placing _‘Oliver Twist’_ back inside the crate. “This is quite a lot of books.”

“Yes, well… they’re all dusty covered and worn from reading,” he replied apologetically. “I’m sorry, Belle… they’ll be out of your hair before you know it.

With an aching heart Belle remembered the books he had brought her in the beginning. _Persuasion, Frankenstein, North and South…_ Beautiful books that her cursed self had just thrown away as if they were nothing.  

She would give everything to have them back now. And to thank the man who had given them to her.

Her husband still looked as if he expected her to start yelling at him any second now and she gave him a sad smile.  

“You know, sometimes the best book has the dustiest jacket.”

* * *

 

_Belle Gold flat out refused to kiss her husband. Even when the judge who had married them - and why had they gotten married again?- pronounced them husband and wife and told him he could kiss the bride, she had averted her head in revulsion._

_Occasionally she allowed him to bed her, usually when she couldn’t stand his pleading any longer or the slight reproachful look in his dark eyes.  She despised him even more afterwards, but somehow sleeping with him she could tolerate._

_Kissing however was completely out of the question. When he kissed her, he got too close, too invasive and she couldn’t let it stand. If felt like he was taking something from her that she wasn’t willing to give._   
_She would not allow him to have so much power over her._

* * *

 

It had taken her some time to convince Rumplestiltskin to let her kiss him. The first time she had kissed him after she had regained her memories, he had been so shocked, so completely taken by surprise that she had wanted to be with him that she wagered he’d hardly noticed it.   
But when she tried to initiate a kiss in the days that followed, he had recoiled in shock and soon her cursed memories had caught up with her and she’d understood why.

When they made love he never tried to kiss her and tensed when she did as much as brush her lips over his cheeks.  Eventually she had simply cradled his face between her hands and pressed her forehead against his.

 “Do you want to kiss me?” she’d asked gently, gazing into his yearning eyes and hoping with all her heart that he’d answer affirmatively.

They had been together in the Dark Castle, but they hadn’t been able to kiss then for the fear of breaking his curse.  Sometimes the desire to be able to kiss each other like they wanted to had almost been too much.   
To know that her cursed self had purposely refrained from kissing him was just maddening.

He had nodded almost imperceptibly at her question, but it had been enough for her. Breathing a sigh of relief, she had leaned in and pressed her lips to his.

After that Rumplestiltskin became as addicted to kissing her as she was to kissing him. The way he held her and supported the back of her neck, they way he gently nibbled on her lower lip, or how his tongue each and every time asked for permission to enter her mouth by softly stroking her lips instead of just demanding access, all of it was enough to make her toes curl with desire for him.   
And she loved to explore him as well, could do it for hours at the time. There was a spot on the roof of his mouth that made him go through the ceiling with want for her whenever she teased it with her tongue and she soon discovered that she could make him go limb in her arms and rock hard against her belly if she just ran her hands through his hair and scratched her nails over his scalp.

She just loved kissing him.

* * *

 

_If they slept together, Belle Gold insisted he would turn off the lights. Over the years he’d gotten rather adept at fulfilling her carnal needs, but she had no desire to see him whilst he did it. If she closed her eyes she could picture the handsome, tall, broad-shouldered, well-bodied men she’d rather have bringing her to her peak and if she called out the wrong name occasionally… well her husband should be thankful she was allowing him to touch her to begin with._

_He pleased her well enough, but she wished he would stop making such a fuss about it.  She didn’t care for sweet words or lingering touches.  She just wanted him to get it over with, to work her to a blissful, all consuming release without having to deal with his clinginess and his desire to be loved._

_As if anyone could love him._

_Usually she kicked him out her bed afterwards and told him to sleep in the guest room for a couple of days, not able to stand his presence any longer._

_But somehow, he always found his way back into her bed and for some reason she always let him._

_It was a strange thing they had, a thing she couldn’t explain. No matter how much she despised him, no matter how much she wished to be free of him, it felt as if she was bound to him with a thousand unbreakable threads._

* * *

 

Ever since she remembered, Belle made a point of keeping the lights on whenever they made love.

Since she regained her memories, they’d done so frequently, because somehow everything was just a little bit easier when they were together.  It was as if their bodies remembered the love they had shared once, even if their cursed selves had forgotten it.   
In the safety of their bed, surrounded by blankets and the quilt he’d once made for her they clung to each other until Belle could believe it was just the two of them and that they were in a place were Regina and the curse couldn’t touch them.

And oh how she loved him when they were together like that. When some of his insecurities and hurt melted away and her lover reappeared.    
At the Dark Castle she had been an inexperienced maiden. Curious as hell, but completely unfamiliar with the ways of the world.

 He had showed her with endless patience and care what it was like to be loved and cherished, forever fearing that he was hurting her or making her feel uncomfortable.  He had been so tender, so gentle, so entirely focussed on her pleasure, so completely enraptured by her.  
He had taught her everything she knew about love and now she put that knowledge to good use in convincing him how loved, how cherished and adored _he_ was.  

She whispered the words while she kissed and licked every inch of his skin, while she pleasured him with her hands, her mouth, her body, any way that he would let her and while she gazed into his eyes as he finally lost control.   
And she held her breath, right afterwards as his eyes became soft and loving and completely unguarded.  In those moments she could dare to hope that her Rumplestiltskin was coming back to her.


	7. Chapter 7: Cooking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Milvus prompted: how about, Rumple tentatively starts to respond to Belle's efforts and attempts some small romantic gesture (maybe gifting her another book, or perhaps the small pearl necklace she wears in SD), only to be confused/distressed by the depth of her reaction.

She really had put all her effort into it, but as she looked at the trail of destruction in front of her she realized she had failed miserably.  Everything was ruined and no matter what she did now or how much she wished things to be different, it was too late.  
This was beyond fixing.

Brushing the tears of frustration from her face, Belle jumped when the kitchen door opened and her husband stepped inside, his eyes growing wide at the wreckage that had once been their pristine kitchen.

“What happened here?” he asked bewildered.

“I tried to cook dinner,” she replied in a small voice, dejection settling over her.    
She’d had such high hopes for this evening. She was going to cook them dinner and try and create a romantic atmosphere with candles and wine and hopefully they could snuggle on the couch afterwards and watch a movie, preferably something romantic.  If she could just get him to relax he might become less tense and apprehensive around her.

“What were you trying to make?” he asked carefully, picking up the casserole and examining its black contents.

“Lasagna,” she muttered shame-faced, adverting his eyes.

All through their cursed marriage he’d taken care of the cooking and he was quite a proficient cook. She, on the other hand, apparently couldn’t boil an egg to save her life. In the Dark Castle she’d never had the cook, the castle providing them magically with food and her cursed memories had been woefully unhelpful.

Resignedly she started to clean up the mess, dumping the burned lasagna unceremoniously into the bin before shoving all the pans and utensils she had used into the dishwasher.  Without saying a word he began to help her, cleaning the counter and the stove with a cloth. Her heart sank at the sight of it.  
This was supposed to be about giving him a break, about doing something nice for him after he returned from a long day at the shop.    
Now, because of her incompetence he’d come home to a mess of a kitchen and no dinner in sight.

“Sorry…” she offered quietly.

He gazed at her, a slight frown on his forehead, his hands twisting nervously. “Would you… would you like me to show you how to make lasagna?” he asked tentatively.

As her eyes grew wide and her stomach did a summersault in relief, she watched how his expression became tense and he braced himself as if was expecting to be scolded out of the room.  
“I’d love that!” she replied breathlessly. “Would you?”

“Yes… of course…” He appeared to be as bewildered as she was. “That is… if there are still enough ingredients left.”

A quick survey of the fridge learned that it was still stocked up enough to provide them with anything that they needed and he took out two cutting boards and knives. 

“First we need to cut the vegetables,” he told her. As he was cutting up leek, carrot and celery, she concentrated on the onions and it wasn’t long before tears started to sting her eyes and she gave a pathetic sniffle.

“Here…” reaching out, he filled a glass bowl with water and placed it next to her cutting board. “This should help.

“It will?” she asked, bewildered, turning around to face him, barely able to see him through her blurry vision.

He was looking at her with a most peculiar expression on his face, somewhere between amusement and astonishment and then he was standing in front of her with a dishtowel in his hand, carefully brushing the tears away from her eyes.

She barely dared to breath, gazing up into his eyes, captivated by the soft look of wonder in them. The towel slid from his grasp, but he didn’t move his hand, only very, very softly trailed his fingertips over her cheek.  
“It will,” he assured her.

Somehow, speaking the words had snapped him out of his trance and he stepped back, his shoulders tightening in awkwardness again.  
“Yes… well…” he managed. “I’ll get started on the white sauce.”

While she prepared the vegetables and the meat, she watched from the corner of her eyes how he meticulously added measured amounts of milk and stirred the sauce until it began to thicken.  The picture he made suddenly reminded her of Rumplestiltskin in his laboratory and her heart constricted painfully.

“It looks perfect,” she praised him. “All I managed was a lumpy substance.”

He gave her a shy smile and the urge to wrap her arms around him and kiss him senseless was almost overwhelming.  
“Okay, what’s next?” she asked, trying to distract herself.

“You need to grease the casserole,” he told her, a hint of a smile playing around his lips. “If you don’t, the lasagne going to burn.”

Feeling like a prized idiot, Belle groaned. “Well, that explains a lot.”

He laughed at that and the sound of it was so unexpected that Belle could feel her heart skip several beats. He hadn’t laughed in twenty-eight miserable years. She’d happily eat burned lasagne for the rest of her life if she could get him to laugh like that again.

Ten minutes later the lasagne was in the oven and between the two of them they cleared away the rest of the dishes and set the table, Belle’s heart fluttering in her chest as she lit the candles and put on some background music, her hopes of salvaging the night increasing tenfold.

Over dinner they talked quietly and it was perhaps the first real conversation they had since she had regained her memories. The wine they drank with the lasagne was making her feel rosy and after they’d had ice-cream for dessert she felt pleasantly languid and warm.  
She put the last of the dishes into the dishwasher and when she turned around to leave the kitchen, she found him standing in front of her with a half hopeful, half nervous expression on his face.

“Belle…” he started tentatively, stroking a lock of hair behind her ear. “Do you… want to sleep with me tonight?”

Heat flooded her belly at the thought and standing on her tiptoes, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his head down for a kiss.    
“Yes!” she whispered against his lips, burying her hands into his hair. “Yes, I would like that very much.”

It took ages for them to get upstairs as they paused every few steps for another bone-melting kiss. By the time they were half way up, she’d managed to get rid of his suit jacket and tie and had pulled his shirt out of his trousers. When she slipped her hands underneath to caress the skin on his stomach and chest she could feel the heat coming off him, making her hands shake with desire.

Her husband was being uncharacteristically forward and determined and when he broke their kiss for a moment so that he could tug the dress she was wearing over her head, carelessly  dropping it on the stairs behind him, she shivered in anticipation.  
He cut off her whimpering pleas with another hungry kiss, his hand slowly mapping out the curves of her body through the silk chemise she was wearing underneath the dress.

Belle began to feel like every single nerve-end in her body was on fire and she was half contemplating to sink down on the stairs and let him have her right there when they finally reached the top of the stairs. She all but dragged him into the bedroom and fell on the bed with a relieved sigh, knowing that her legs couldn’t possibly have held her up for another minute.  
He covered her body with his and she sighed blissfully, welcoming his weight on top of her. He was eager and completely unhurried at the same time, touching and caressing her slowly as if he was trying to draw it out for as long as he could.  

And she was more than happy to let him.

Just as he started to push up the chemise over her hips and rubbed his thumbs over the exposed skin of her stomach she pulled his head down to hers again, so that she could look in his eyes once more.  
“I love you,” she whispered, caressing the side of his face, tears stinging her eyes. “I love you so much.”

Above her, he turned rigid, his dazed, passion-fueled expression turning into a look of anguish. Rolling of her, he scrambled to the sight of the bed, his breathing ragged.

 “What are you doing?” he asked hoarsely.

Panic was rising in her throat as she tried to crawl after him, reaching out to grab his arm. “I meant it…”

“Shut up!” he barked, recoiling from her touch and getting to his feet. His bad ankle barely supporting him, he staggered backwards, holding onto the dresser to keep his balance.

“Please believe me…” she pleaded, tears forming in her eyes. “I love you!”

“Shut _the hell_ up!” he snarled again, inching away from her.

“But I do,” she insisted stubbornly. “Truly I do!”

“Do you really think I’m that much of a fool?” His voice was low and menacing as he reached the bedroom door.

“No one - _no one_ \- could ever, ever love me!”

“Rumplestiltskin, wait!”

She hadn’t dared to use his real name before for the fear of confusing him even further, but now it involuntarily slipped from her mouth.

But he was already gone and from the slamming of the door across the hall she realized he’d fled into the guest room.

Crawling back into the bed, she pulled their quilt over herself, curled up into a tight ball and cried.


	8. Chapter 8: Shattering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helga prompted: a pregnancy scare?

_Her stomach was twisted into knots and she was feeling more nauseated than she had during the past three mornings when she had without fail threw up her breakfast right after eating it._

_While she waited, she counted the pills left inside the strip. Teeny, tiny pills, too small to seem to be able to make such a difference, mocking her. There was one too many._   
_Only one, tiny pill too many._

_The consequence however was colossal._

_She should have let him take care of protection. She should have made demands. She should have rejected his last advances. She should have never let him near her to begin with. She should have never married him. She should have never set eyes on him._

_She should have…_

_After the unsanitary business of prepping the pregnancy test, the five minutes that followed were the longest of her life._   
_It couldn’t be. Life wasn’t that unfair. She wasn’t that cursed._

_Picking up the wand with shaking hands, she dropped it almost instantly after only a glance and rushed to the toilet to retch._

_Two red lines had appeared on the tiny screen._

* * *

 

_She scheduled the appointment without breathing a word to anyone and welcomed the hollow feeling afterwards. Everything was as it should be, her small problem conveniently taken care of, her husband none the wiser._

_A few days later everything went back to normal, to the way things were supposed to be. She managed to push the unfortunate incident to the back of her mind, to forget about it almost._   
_But then they got into a fight, like they always did. When her anger and frustration was just too much to be kept inside.  When his meek, timid attitude stretched her patience to the limit, until it snapped._   
_There had been a town meeting. Quite a few of Storybrooke’s shop owners had complained about the increased rent of the venues and she had forced her husband into speaking in her defense.  Naturally he had messed up completely. Stuttering, trailing off, tripping over apologies, he had disappointed her so thoroughly that that by the time they’d gotten home, she’d been seething with anger._

_He had apologized again of course, with large, sorrowful eyes, claiming how sorry he was and how he was going to endeavor to make it up to her. This only aggravated her further. She didn’t want his apologies. She didn’t want his empty promises.  She didn’t want him. She just wanted him to hurt as badly as she was hurting. She wanted him to experience the same sense of meaninglessness , of lost dreams and opportunities she had to live with every single day._

_And so she had told him. Hurled the words at him with all the venom and malice she could muster. She told him about the pregnancy. About the child that had been growing inside her for only a few days, before she had it taken care of._   
_Because she couldn’t stomach the idea of carrying his child. Of giving up her life, her body, her freedom for his offspring._

_And she watched as his eyes turned dark with horror and his mouth began to tremble. She watched the horror give way to a cold, shocked fury as the blood drained from his face. She watched how the lines graved themselves in his face, a permanent mark of the pain she’d inflicted on him by taking away his chance to become a father. She watched as the hope and longing that had persevered in his eyes, despite everything, died._

* * *

 

Emma Swan had broken the curse. Emma Swan had broken the curse and all around Storybrooke, people were remembering and reuniting.

She caught up with Rumplestiltskin in the forest as he was on his way to a well, his eyes set determinedly, his gait purposeful.

“Rumplestiltskin, wait!” she called after him,” and he froze in his tracks.

“I know you remember now…” she continued. “I love you.”

He finally turned around, dazed eyes meeting hers.

“Belle…?” he asked tentatively. “How… how is this possible?”

“I regained my memories three months ago,” she replied hurriedly. “I remember everything.”

He took a hesitant step towards her and then another. “You’re here…” he managed, his voice disbelieving. “Regina didn’t separate us… I was so afraid that she would…”

“No, she didn’t,” she agreed, her voice breaking.   
Regina hadn’t separated them. Instead she had inflicted something far worse on them.

He was reaching out his hand to touch her shoulder when he froze again, his outstretched hand hovering limply in the air for a few moments before dropping down and Belle instantly understood it’s meaning. He remembered _everything_.

 Once again, his eyes went dark with horror and anguish, like he was experiencing the pain of losing the child he’d never known about all over again.

“Our baby…” he grunted out, his voice strained and hoarse. “We could have had a child and you murdered it.”

“I am so sorry, Rumple,” she pleaded, tears starting to roll down her cheeks. “I wasn't really myself… I would never do that…I would never betray you, betray our baby like that…”

“Only you did,” he said, his voice hard. “Our baby, Belle… how could you?”

“Rumple please…” she begged, closing the distance between them and grabbing is shoulders. “Please, listen to me… try to understand…”

But he shoved her away roughly and with so much force that she staggered backwards and tripped, falling to the ground.

“Get away from me…” he growled, his face twisted with anger and hatred. “I will never forgive you for this… I will never look at you again… You might as well be dead to me!”

“Rumple!” she cried, trying to scramble to her feet, only to find that her legs wouldn’t support her weight any longer. ”Rumple… please… _please…_ ”

He turned away from her and stalked away and she wrapped her arms around her knees and clutched herself tightly, muttering his name over and over again.

* * *

 

She woke up panting, almost choking from the lack of air, tangled up in her bedsheets, hugging her knees to her chest and sobbing helplessly. “Rumple… Rumple…”

The second she realized where she was, she flung herself on her other side and reached out her arms, only to encounter empty air.

He wasn’t there. Rumplestiltskin was gone.

With her heart still pounding she rolled herself up into a tight ball again, wrapping the quilt around her, pretending it were his arms holding her.

‘Just a dream,’ she told herself through wracking sobs and clattering teeth. ‘Just a horrible dream.’

She’d never been pregnant. They never had a baby. She hadn’t murdered their child. At least they’d been spared that.

But everything else was painfully, heart-wrenchingly real. Emma Swan _would_ break the curse, probably sooner than later.  Rumplestiltskin _would_ remember. He _would_ be able to recall every bit of abuse she’d inflicted on him in the past three decades with vivid detail.   
 And every bit of love or tenderness he still felt for her would die within him when he did.

He was already pulling away from her. Ever since she had inadvertently told him that she loved him, he had been avoiding her at all costs. He spend most of his time in his shop and had been sleeping in the guest room for a week now.   
He didn’t come near her, he didn’t talk to her, he barely even looked a her.

As if he couldn’t bear the sight of her.

When he remembered, he would hate her.

She’d have no use for nightmares then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I first got this prompt I thought I'd never be able to work it in because it would be *too* dark. Then this happened.


	9. Inching closer

After two weeks she began to lose hope. She had thought that by giving him time, he would come around eventually, but instead he only seemed to disappear further into himself. In his own quiet, subdued way he made it abhorrently clear that he didn’t want to be anywhere near her and as much as it hurt, she let him be, not daring to pressure him into spending time with her or forcing him to talk to her when he so obviously didn’t want to.    
She didn’t deserve it anyway.

So in the morning she strained her ears as she heard him leave the guest room around five o’clock and make his way downstairs, the clink of his cane sounding just a little slower and heavier every morning. She listened to the sound of his footsteps fading away while she pressed her hand over her mouth and tried not to cry.

By the time she came downstairs he had long left for his pawnshop, leaving the kitchen behind in an impeccable clean state, the chipped cup neatly rinsed and drying on the counter.   At least he was still using their cup.   
At least he hadn’t thrown it away now that it seemed he had finally decided to walk away from their relationship.  She tried to draw hope from that, tried to make herself believe that as long as they still had their cup, everything could still turn itself around.  

With each day that passed it became harder to hold on to that hope.

He spend long days at the shop, often not returning until after nine in the evening, heading straight for the guest room again upon his return.    
She fixed them dinner every night, slowly becoming more adept at cooking, set the table and waited each evening without fail, until the food grew cold and stale and it was only fit to be thrown away.

During the first week, she packed lunches in containers and left them on the counter for him to take to work, but he never touched them.  She wrote him little notes, just to wish him a nice day and left those on the counter too before she went to bed, but the next morning they were always still there, untouched and mocking her.

After two weeks she gave up these attempts at initiating contact, terrified that she would only alienate him from her further.  At least he still came home every night and only the knowledge that he was sleeping under the same roof kept her from losing her mind completely.   
She held back, hoping, waiting, praying that one day he would find it in his heart to come back to her.

And she got used to the dull ache in her heart and the sinking feeling in her stomach every time she watched him move away from her.    
She found little ways for herself to hold on to him. When he wasn’t home she drank from the chipped cup, always making sure it was back in the same spot before he got home.  She ransacked the house for photos of the two of them and at last found their wedding album, stashed away at the attic.  She browsed through it, looking for one decent photo of the two of them together, but finding none. In each and every single one of the pictures, her cursed self stared into he camera with a hard, aloof look as if she wanted to be miles away.  Eventually though she found a photograph of him that she loved.

It was a snapshot more than anything else, a photo taken at an unguarded moment. She was in it too, looking bored, but her husband was staring in the distance with a wistful expression on his face. There was still a tinge of sadness about him, but the look in his eyes was soft.   
She took a pair of scissors and cut herself right out of the picture, throwing it unceremoniously into the trash.  But that photo of him she kept close, just to have something to hold onto when there was nothing else.

She saw him briefly when he entered the house in the evening, always trying to at least catch a glimpse of him.  From his slumped shoulders and his difficult gait, she knew he was just as miserable as she was.

After two weeks she began to notice that he was losing weight, his suit jacket hanging of his shoulders. Her Rumple had always been a slight man, but now it seemed that weight was dripping off him.   
 One morning, almost three weeks after their fall out, she crept out of bed when she heard the front door slam shut and peered through the window, watching him stop in front of the Cadillac, resting his arm on the roof of the car and gazing into nothingness for a few, long moments.   
Even the three piece suit couldn’t hide how skinny he looked and how his face was gaunt and pinched.  Tears rolled down over her cheeks and the urge to run after him, wrap her arms around him and coax him back into their bed where she could hold him and cuddle him became almost too great.

He was wasting away in front of her eyes and there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing he would allow her to do anymore.

And when Emma broke the curse, he’d pull away even further. He’d hate her even more.

She missed him desperately. She missed the sound of his voice and the way he looked at her, his brown eyes unguarded. She missed his quiet presence and his nearness.  She missed the man he’d been in the Dark Castle, her lovable, layered, complicated, vulnerable imp with his horrible quips, his flamboyant gestures and his shy smile.

She missed what they were together and grew more and more afraid that they would never have that back.

The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on her either. For twenty-eight years he had endured her abuse, her insults and her degrading comments and yet he had never faltered in his desire to stay with her.  

But when she told him that she loved him and he fled from her as fast as he could.

* * *

 

 Almost a month had past when she returned from her office one evening at a much later hour than she usually came home.  There had been an issue with a relatively new tenant not being able to make his first monthly payment and it had taken all her creativity to figure out a way to let the man stay in his apartment and maintain the image of a ruthless, unyielding landlord.

She understood the rules of the curse only too well. She couldn’t appear altered, no one must know that she had regained her memories or the consequences would be catastrophic.

She had lingered after the meeting, finishing up on some paperwork and straightening out her office, feeling no desire to return home.  After all, there wasn’t anyone waiting for her anymore.

But when she finally did came home into a deserted house she spotted something lying on the counter. With slow steps she approached the rectangular object, barely daring to believe her eyes. Reaching out a shaking hand, she was almost afraid it would disappear the moment she would try to touch it.

But despite her fears, her fingers did make contact with a smooth cover and a soft gasp escaped her as she lifted the book in her hands.

The cover read in cursive, gold writing: _Persuasion_ by Jane Austen.

The book wasn’t antique, but definitely vintage and well-loved. Opening it, she breathed in the scent of the pages, her heart pounding as realization hit her.   
There was only one person in all of Storybooke who would leave her a book and tears of relief welled up in her eyes. It was a test, she realized that fully. Her husband was testing the waters, seeing how she would respond to this small token of affection and if she would scorn him for it like she had done so many times in the past.

Briefly her hand went to the cellphone in her pocket, but before she could press his number, she changed her mind. She’d let him set the pace this time. She wouldn’t smother him with affection and heartfelt declarations he wasn’t ready to hear yet only to make him feel overwhelmed and causing him to retreat from her.

She would however make sure that he started eating properly again. Opening the refrigerator door, she gathered the ingredients for a pasta salad.

* * *

 

 The next morning when she came downstairs the plastic container with the little note on top was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doodlinglina prompted:   
> Much to Belle's suprise, Gold opens up a tiny bit and initiates either a (somewhat) heartfelt conversation, or hand-holding/hugging, or maybe kissing, or anything that feels right for you. I just want Gold to pleasantly surprise Belle (and himself), no matter how small the thing he does is.


	10. Browsing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DiraWhatIf and a few more prompted:   
> How about some Gold (with cursed memories) POV? It would be great to know what he's thinking!   
> Maybe she can't resist the urge to be with him during the day and she visit in the pawnshop? :D

The shop was dark and most often quiet, but he liked it that way. Surrounded by the countless little knick-knacks and artifacts he felt at ease, felt like he belonged somewhere. Most of the things in his shop had been there for as long as he could remember and he could never bring himself to part with them.  Occasionally he acquired new items for the shop and he sold them in the months that followed, but no one ever tried to purchase the things that seemed to permanently belong to his shop.  For that at least he was grateful.

At the end of the month his bank account showed that a nice amount of money had been transferred into it as a result of transactions he’d made and he could never quite figure out how that had happened.  In the grand scheme of things it didn’t really matter.

For as long as he could remember, he felt displaced, as if the never-changing, monotone routine he’d performed every day for the past twenty-eight years was barely scraping the surface of what his life truly comprised.  The frustrating thing was that he couldn’t remember anything beyond the town he lived in and the shop that he owned.  He had forgotten what he had forgotten, save from the occasional, taunting flash of a memory, reminding him that things weren’t as they should be.

Being in his shop helped, the items oddly familiar somehow and grounding him to a life he didn’t know anymore.   
His dreams were agonizing and every night when he laid down in bed he was terrified of what he would see when he closed his eyes. In his dreams the memories he couldn’t quite remember became blurry images, flashes of sounds and screams, fleeting tendrils of things he couldn’t grasp.   
Sometimes his dreams tortured him with images that were pleasant, beautiful even. The laughter of a child… a boy. The thrill of something powerful pumping through his veins, making him feel invincible, a wheel that was turning and turning, soothing him, blue skirts….  

He woke up from those dreams, crying and moaning, desperately trying to hold on to them, to cling to the memory, to solidify the image inside his head into something tangible.   But they always left, chased away by the reality that faced him when he opened his eye.

A reality that felt like a nightmare even more than his darkest dream. Like sand slipping through his fingers, the memories left to a place inside his mind where he could not reach them, leaving him behind with a heart aching with homesickness and grief.

Sometimes his dreams were terrifying. Cannon fire, fields drenched in blood, hands that were letting him go and let him fall and fall, the taste of death and condemnation in his mouth, a hand that he let go while he should have held on… hold on and never let go… emptiness that remained, emptiness that drowned him.   
From those dreams he woke panting and sweating, his heart racing. Those dreams left him feeling shaky and unsteady for days, self-loathing cursing through him with every move he made.

Something dark and ugly was roaring inside of him, destroying him and everything that he touched. He avoided mirrors as much as he could, but whenever he caught a glimpse of himself he startled as if somehow what he saw reflected back at him wasn’t right, could not be him.  He hated what he saw in the mirror. The pale, gaunt face, the weak, shaking mouth, the death, soulless eyes that hid so much evil lurking within.

He was evil. This knowledge was rooted deep inside him, although he couldn’t pinpoint any particular actions that warranted that belief.  He was simply unmistakably evil. Like his eyes were brown and his build was slight.   
When he looked at his wife he knew that she knew it too and the knowledge was oddly comforting. She looked at him with the hatred and disdain he knew he deserved, although he didn’t quite understand why.  She validated his vague, inexplainable sense of self-deprecation. If Belle saw the monster inside him it meant that it must be there.

He loved his wife. He loved her with every fibre of his being and although loving her brought him nothing but pain and shame he couldn’t stop doing so, much less like he could stop breathing. He clung to her despite her cruel words and her harsh rejection of him time and time again. He took her insults and her mockery and occasionally begged for a scrape of her affection if the need became to great.   
He needed her because without her, he was nothing. Without her there was only darkness left in his heart.

For twenty-eight years things had carried on in this miserable, but predictable way. But then, about two months ago, something had changed.  He still remembered the look on her face when she’d come home that afternoon, the day after the humiliating incident at Mayor Mill’s party when he had spilled wine over her designer dress. They had rowed that morning, or rather, she had screamed at him, telling him what a worthless, useless waste of space he was, her voice pinched with anger and contempt.  

When she came home that evening he had been apprehensive, bracing himself for another fight, for another round of vilification. Instead, she had been… attentive… asking about his day, complimenting his cooking, cleaning away their dishes… It had uprooted every aspect of his bleak, structured life and it hadn’t end there.  She took him to bed that night, showering him with kisses and touches and giving him free access to her body so he could touch and kiss as much as he desired, something she had never allowed him before.  And most astonishing, after that she had crawled into his arms, begging him to hold her. She had fallen asleep in his embrace and still been there when he woke up the next day.

The weeks that had followed had been wonderful, painful, scary and above all confusing. Her altered behavior didn’t seem to be a passing phase. She sought him out, talked to him, tried to convince him to spend time with her every opportunity she got.  There was something different about her, something soft and warm that made him both yearn for her and fear her.   
She had initiated their love making on quite a few occasions and responded enthusiastically to each and every one of his timid initiative to intimacies.  Where before he had to plead and beg for a smidgen of her affection, she now gave it freely and in abundance.

And he caved in every time he realized she wasn’t going to rebuff him, his skin hungering for her touch, for every kiss, every caress she bestowed on him.  When she touched him he felt less like a monster and more like a man. When she wrapped herself around him, her warm body pressed against his, she soothed some of the ache that festered inside him and that he could never quite explain.  

Somewhere deep inside him, a piece of himself was missing. The bone of his bones and the flesh of his flesh, something that was torn away from him and left a wound that was still bleeding.  Something he couldn’t remember.   
 But as long as he could hold her in his sleep, the nightmares couldn’t touch him.

Then she told him that she loved him and everything inside him had rebelled at her words. It was too ludicrous for words, too painful a notion to contemplate.  It was too terrifying to think about and so he ran, fled from her as far as he could even though he had nowhere to run to.  He locked himself inside the guest room and his pawnshop and refused to look at her.   
Refused to hope, only to have that hope shattered.  Refused to love, only to have it taken away from him.

* * *

 

The bell above the door to his shop jingled quietly and made him look up, his jaw dropping in surprise when he saw her enter. In twenty-eight years, his wife had never set foot into his shop.

“Hi…” She greeted quietly, holding out a thick, brown paper envelope. “This came for you in the mail today and I thought I’d stop by to give it to you…”

“Thank you…” he replied, barely managing his voice to work. “It must have been addressed wrong… I’m sorry you had to get all the way down here…”

“No matter,” she replied, giving him a beaming smile. “I like seeing your shop.”  

If she was just pretending, she was doing it very convincingly, because she looked around with honest curiosity in her eyes, taking in all the items in his shop.   
“You have so many beautiful things here,” she said softly, admiring a glass unicorn mobile.

“I don’t sell a lot,” he answered, following her every move with his eyes. “Most of the things have been here for ages.”

“Most of it is too special to sell anyway,” she retorted with a little smile and it hit so close to the way he was feeling that for a moment he forgot how to breathe.

“Besides,” she continued. “I know how much these items mean to you… _Oh…”_ She’d rounded the glass counter and came face to face with a pair of truly hideous wooden puppets and he felt a chuckle escape him at the face she pulled.

“Yes… well… some of the items here are pretty unusual.”

His laughter obviously took her by surprise and for a long moment she stared at him, her eyes filling with surprised wonder and joy. She was so very beautiful with her soft curls brushing across her shoulders, her cream blouse and flared skirt that set of the curves of her petite frame and he wondered fleetingly when he had noticed that for the last time.

She gave him another warm smile before she continued to explore the shop and he followed her around like a puppy, unable to hold himself in check, quietly telling her about various things he kept on display and reveling in her undivided attention.  He needed her like air, couldn’t keep away even if he tried. Her smile warmed his heart and dispelled some of the frost he carried inside.

With a small frown he realized he hadn’t seen her smile a great deal in the last couple of weeks, not since he had fled her arms and their bed three weeks ago. He had known all along that he was hurting her, although he couldn’t really understand how, since she always made it so clear that she wanted nothing more than to be as far away from his as possible.  The distance he maintained between them was hurting her, no matter how much he tried to keep his eyes closed to that. 

The book he had given her a few days ago had been in many aspects a way to ease his guilt and to test the waters. In the past, his wife hadn’t care for anything he’d tried to give her, least of all books. Had she refused his gift, displayed any anger over it, he would have known that nothing had changed.   
But she hadn’t, because this Belle was different and it terrified him.

“Well… I suppose I should be heading back,” she said softly once they’d made their tour around the shop and ended back in front of the counter and for a moment he believed that her shoulders were slumping before he dismissed the thought.

“Thank you for bringing the envelope,” he said. “I was waiting for it.”

“You’re welcome.” The smile she flashed him didn’t quite reach her eyes and she clutched her purse tightly.  “Good bye…”

She didn’t ask him when he’d be home, she didn’t offer to stay longer like she had done a couple of weeks ago and his heart sunk with disappointment.  She was sad and dejected and he had never seen it more clearly than he was now. She was hurting badly because of him and a book was nowhere near enough to make amends. If only he had the courage to offer her more.

She had already turned around and was heading for the door before the sound of his voice surprised them both.

“Belle… how about I cook dinner tonight?”

She swirled around, her eyes wide with surprise and disbelief. “Really? You want to?”

She had looked at him like that before, with eyes shining with surprise and happiness because of something he had done, but he _just couldn’t remember_.

“Of course… how about Risotto again?”

“I’d love that,” she replied, her voice trembling slightly. “I’ll see you tonight then?”

“Until tonight.” Shaken by his own bound of courage, he turned around and disappeared behind the counter, not daring to watch her leave the shop, but instead focussing his gaze on the ledger in front of him as she exited the shop and almost collided into someone on the pavement.

“Oh, excuse me Sherif Swan,” he heard her say.

 Something tugged at his brain. For the past few weeks he had lived in a dark tunnel of pain and self-isolation and only a few things had gotten through.  But he did know that Sheriff Humbert had been found dead a fortnight ago. Problems with his heart, or so he’d come to understand.

Apparently Graham Humbert had already been succeeded.

But when he looked up at the door, the sidewalk was empty again.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I worked two prompts into this chapter: 
> 
> An anon prompted:  
> At Belle's suggestion they go to Granny's. Gold spills something and is horribly apologetic. Belle soothes him.
> 
> And another anon prompted:  
>  Rumple starts to bleed through

Miner’s Day brought all of Storybrooke out in the streets, despite the dreary, windy weather. From her cursed memories, Belle learned that in the past she had attended the festival with Regina and later Henry, not bothering to check in with her husband who manned one of the many stalls at the fair.

For the past week or so things between them had marginally improved. He was less evasive and they were sharing their dinners again.  But he was still sleeping in the guest room and left every morning before the crack of dawn, before she had the chance to greet him or to even see him.    
The hour or so she got to spend in his company every evening was a wonderful improvement, but it was still no where near enough to soothe her aching heart that longed for his arms around her and just wanted to be with him.

At least he was eating better and wasn’t looking so very gaunt anymore.

She persevered with her resolve to let him set the pace now, but it took every bit of her patience to do so. He was still wary and tense around her and lately she began to feel that the kindest thing for her to do would be to move out of their home and into one of the empty apartments that she wasn’t renting out at the moment.  He had suffered nothing but abuse and pain because of her for twenty-eight long years and where she had been hopeful a few weeks ago that they would be able to get past that, she had long given up on that illusion now.

He was moving away from her and the process was irreversible. His cursed self already didn’t want her anymore and when the curse broke he wouldn’t want to have anything to do with her anymore.

She would never get to kiss him again. They would never make love again. Never again she would see the soft look of love and wonder in his eyes as he held her afterwards, both of them still trembling and sweating from the intensity of their love-making.   
He was slipping away from her and when the curse broke she would lose everything.

But when it did, he would remember who he was and he could start looking for his son. Baelfire would forgive him and the two of them could start over again. Her Rumplestiltskin would have everything his heart desired again.

He would be happy again.

And in the end that was all that mattered.

* * *

 

Spending the best part of the morning with Regina was more tasking than she could have anticipated. Before she had regained her memories, she had met with Mayor frequently, even going as far as calling her a friend. They didn’t really confide in each other perse, but they were drawn together because their ambitions were both so similar.   
They both craved power and a wealthy lifestyle. They both enjoyed besting people and bending them to their will. They were both cold and self-centered and together the had indulged in feeling as superior as they choose to.

But now that the scales had fallen from her eyes being around the woman that was responsible for the three decades of pain her love had suffered was almost impossible.  

It didn’t take Belle long to gauge from Regina’s responses that she hadn’t yet figured out that she had regained her memories, the Mayor being too preoccupied with the arrival of Emma Swan and spending the best part of the morning venting her dislike of the woman, especially since Henry had decided to spend Miner’s Day with her.   
Belle kept responding with mono-syllable noises of agreement, hoping that by doing so she would keep the spotlight off her and prevent Regina from finding out the truth, but by the end of the morning she was exhausted by the effort.

At long last she managed to excuse herself, claiming she had some paperwork to finish. Regina expressed disappointment at her sudden departure, until she suddenly announced with a menacing look towards Henry’s teacher that she had a task to perform herself.

* * *

 

Grateful to have escaped the queen’s clutches at last Belle hurried towards the fair, anxious to see how her husband was faring.  She found him behind a deserted antique stall, bundled up in an expensive wool coat, leather gloves and a cashmere shawl, but still shivering in the cutting February cold.

“How’s business?” she asked tentatively, approaching the stall.

He shrugged a little, indicating the cashier stand that was overflowing with banknotes.   
“I can’t complain,” he answered with some difficulty, the cold making it hard for him to talk. “It’s quiet now, but I made a few good sales.”

She was willing to bet that hardly anyone had stopped at his booth all morning, but still the money kept flowing in.  When Rumplestiltskin had made his deal with the Evil Queen, back in the Enchanted Forest, he had made her promise him that they would both live comfortably in the land without magic.

Belle had never felt more cheated in her life.

“How about we go to Granny’s for some hot chocolate?” she suggested softly. “You look like you use something to warm you up…”

He tensed at her words and avoided her gaze for long moments and Belle bit her lip in regret, feeling her heart sink to the soles of her feet.

Despite her best intentions, she kept breaking her resolve not to push him and let him set the pace instead. He didn’t want her.  He was going to think of an excuse and reject her and for the rest of the day he would be even more quiet and distant around her than before.

He heaved a deep sigh and then looked up into her eyes again. “All right.”

“A-all right?” she stammered, not daring to believe her ears.

“I _am_ feeling cold,” he admitted, “I’ll ask Mr. Smee to watch the stall for me.”

* * *

 

 A few minutes later they were on their way to Granny’s, Belle’s insides twisting with both excitement and nerves.  His agreement to join her was as surprising as it was wonderful and she was terrified she was going to mess it up somehow.

Because of Miner’s Day, the diner was pretty crowded, but they managed to find a somewhat quiet booth at the back and Belle ordered them both a steaming mug of hot chocolate with an extra helping of whipped cream.

“Did you have a good time with Regina?” her husband asked her tentatively once their order had arrived.

Belle pulled a face. “It was all right. She is upset about the arrival of our new Sheriff, so that was the main topic of our conversation.”

“And how is Henry dealing with the arrival of his mother?” he asked.

“I think at the moment he prefers her company to that of Regina,” Belle replied pensively. “He was with her this morning… I think Regina is afraid Emma will eventually take Henry away from her.”

For the past weeks she had pondered endlessly about the strange coincidence: their savior was also the birth mother of the evil queen’s adoptive son. She knew Rumplestiltskin couldn’t have planned it this way, but it still was extraordinary.

“I think the Mayor has good reason to be afraid,” he said quietly. “I believe a child always wants to be with his parent… a child will always return…”  

Something passed across his face, a look of pure, undiluted pain and Belle’s heart squeezed in her chest, tears welling up in her eyes.   
He didn’t remember his son, he didn’t remember losing him and perhaps that was the one small mercy that this new world had granted him.

“…I cannot imagine it being otherwise…” he finished, his eyes pleading with her for affirmation. Resisting the urge to take his hand between hers, she gave him a soft smile instead.

“I am certain of it,” she soothed him. “A child will always chooses his father… or his mother…”

He nodded at her words, lifting the mug to his lips. The topic of their conversation was unnerving him deeply, she could tell from the way that his hands were shaking. As in slow motion she watched how the mug faltered in his grip, the hot chocolate sloshing over the rim, burning his knuckles.   
He winced in pain and the mug slipped from his hands altogether, its contents spilling over the table.

_“Belle!”_ he jumped to his feet, reaching for her, but by then a few drops had already splashed on her skirt. Pulling a handful of napkins out of the holder, she wiped up the worst of it, keeping the liquid contained on the table.

When she looked up again her heart broke at the terrified expression on his face. He’d gone white to his lips, his eyes dark and wide with horror, his hands moving frantically above the mess.     
“I’m sorry… I’m _so_ sorry…” he stammered, almost incoherent with fear and despite herself and her best intentions, she reached out and grabbed his hands, trying to still him.

At her touch, he froze and fixing her with an anxious stare she was certain he wasn’t even breathing at this point.   
“It’s all right…” she told him gently, clutching his hands in hers. “It was an accident and we can get you a refill… it doesn’t matter…”

“I ruined your clothes…” he chocked out in a strangled voice. “I’m so sorry, Belle…”

There were a few dark spots on her skirt she couldn’t care less about.    
“It’s just a bit of a stain,” she soothed him. “It’ll wash off… don’t worry about it…”

Giving his hand a soft squeeze she urged him to sit down again and when sank back in his seat her insides were just about to unclench when a cold voice spoke:

“This was the prior engagement you bailed on me for?” Regina appeared at their table, one perfectly sculptured eyebrow raised derisively. “You’re going on dates these days?”

She was still holding Rumplestiltskin’s hand and she felt her husband tense at the appearance of the Mayor.

“We were having hot chocolate,” Belle replied in a carefully collected tone of voice. “And to be honest, you are interrupting us.”

“I see I’ve interrupted the usual wreckage your husband manages to create,” Regina sneered, looking at her expectantly, no doubt believing Belle would agree with her.

But with her husband stiffening even further across the table from her, his eyes downcast as if he was bracing himself for the mocking words he was expecting, Belle felt she’d rather risk Regina’s wrath that hurting him more than he already was.

“We’ve hardly seen each other these past few weeks, Regina,” she told the former queen with all the calm she could muster. At least her words were perfectly true. “We’d like to have a few quiet moments together, if you don’t mind.”

“Well, isn’t this a surprising development?” Regina asked, tinkling a laugh. “Although I must confess that I am surprised…”  

She eyed Rumplestiltskin with cruel smile. “I didn’t know you enjoyed spending time with your _loving wife_ so much…”

Belle’s stomach lurched at the harsh words and she felt tears stinging her eyes. Right now Regina held all the power and without Rumplestiltskin remembering, she couldn’t risk her finding out that she knew.  In order to protect him, she had to play nice with Regina, meaning that she ought to get up now and tell Rumplestiltskin that she’d rather spend her afternoon with Regina than with him.

Protecting him meant she had to leave him behind in the diner for all the town to see, humiliating him once more.

She knew what she had to do, only she couldn’t quiet manage her body to move and do just that.

And then, to her immense surprise he spoke.

“I do, as a matter of fact. And I’d like you to leave us now… _please._ ”

That last word had a miraculous effect on the Mayor. For a moment she stared at him, completely paralyzed, all color draining from her face before an almost frightened look crossed over her face. It lasted for only a second and then she straightened her shoulders, giving the both of them a curt nod.

“Well, in that case, I shall leave you to it. I’ll call you later, Belle.”

“Goodbye Regina,” Belle replied absent-mindedly, her attention focussed on her husband. An odd sort of change had come over him. He appeared to be sitting straighter and his face, that had looked so haunted for so many years suddenly looked grim.

“She’s gone…” Belle managed to venture carefully, hoping against hope that their encounter with the queen had somehow juggled his memory.

“She is….” he replied, sounding dazed and before his eyes he slipped back into being the downtrodden, meek man Regina had inflicted on him.

“Would you mind if we went home?” he asked quietly, his eyes hesitantly meeting hers.

“Not at all,” she agreed quickly, already getting to her feet. A headache was brewing between her temples as a result of the stirring events that day. But it didn’t matter, because in her heart sang the small word he’d used.

_‘We’._


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tackled two prompts in this chapter.   
> One by Vialark:   
> If cursed!Belle treated Rumple horribly, how does her father behave? How will Belle respond to Moe verbally humiliating Rumple at a family dinner?  
> I took some liberties with it, as you'll soon find out. 
> 
> And also from little-inkstone:  
> I have a prompt for your Viper verse, if you want! With Belle's increasingly kind behaviour towards him, her husband scrapes together enough courage to ask why she's acting so differently. (Even though he's afraid mentioning the change will cause her to revert to her old mean self.)
> 
> Enjoy!

Before the curse, before Storybooke, Belle had never believed herself capable of hating another person.   
She had disliked some of the knights at her father’s court, the harp instructor that had briefly tutored her was such an odious woman that she often had to excuse herself in the middle of the lesson to go to another room and scream quietly into a pillow, but she’d never genuinely and truly hated anyone before.

Until she had regained her memories and saw what Regina had inflicted on her loved ones.  And it wasn’t just Rumplestiltskin she had hurt with a cursed personality.

About a week after she’d remembered, she had gotten the shock of her life when she had wandered into one of the side streets of Storybrooke’s Main Road and into a small flower shop called ‘Game of Thorns.’   
 She had recognized the heavy-set man behind the counter immediately as her father, but of course he had no idea who _she_ was.

Back in Avonlea, Belle had adored her father, the two of them growing even closer together after her mother’s death.   
 Her father was her hero, her champion, the one who would always support her and have her back, no matter what happened.    
Upon seeing him, she had to keep herself from crying tears of relief. Her father, even if he didn’t recognize her, would know what to do, he would offer advice and a sympathetic ear.

But instead his eyes had grown cold when he saw her, his mouth setting into a harsh line. “Mrs. Gold… if you’re here for the rent, I still have three more days…”

And she remembered. She owned the building of his shop and Moe French was one of the most problematic payers, always trying to get extensions or coming up with excuses why he couldn’t make payment that month.   
She knew her cursed self was a ruthless, unyielding landlord, not hesitating to throw entire families out on the street if they were even a day late with the rent.  

But what didn’t help matters was the fact that the curse also had turned her jovial, easy-tempered, if not slightly overbearing father into the worst version of himself.  

Moe French was bad-tempered, aggressive, foul-mouthed and in general a deeply unpleasant person to deal with. He was always trying to weasel his way out of paying rent, or trying to cut bargains or extension and in the past twenty-eight years they’d had numerous altercations.

This month was no exception. Her father had telephoned her office earlier that afternoon, informing her that he didn’t have the money for rent this month because he had paid a hefty sum of money to a plumber earlier that week, costs he argued that were the responsibility of the landlord. Not looking forward to yet another confrontation with him, but also knowing that she couldn’t all of sudden act very much out of character by forgiving this months’ rent entirely as to not arise suspicion, Belle had thought long and hard about an acceptable compromise and eventually suggested to him that he was to pay the remainder of the rent after deducting the costs of the plumber and that she wanted to receive his payment before the end of the day.

* * *

 

To her surprise Moe French came to the door of the pink house just after they had finished dinner and it was her husband who opened the door for him since she had offered to clean away the dishes.  Immediately upon hearing Moe French’s booming, angry voice she dropped her towel and hastened to the door.

“Mr. French,” she greeted him as calmly as she could muster. “I take it you’re here to pay the remainder of your rent?”

“Here you go, you poisonous viper!” he spat at her, throwing some rolled up bank notes at her.

Belle recoiled in shock, her heart clenching at the venomous words, spoken to her by someone she held so dear.  This was the man who for as long as she could remember had greeted her with a hug and a smile, who affectionately called her _‘Bluebelle’_ and had spoiled her all of her life.

And at the same time, it wasn’t… the man standing in front of her being a complete stranger who was still tearing in on her.

“You’re like a vampire, you are!” he continued, his face flushing purple and a vein throbbing angrily on his forehead. “A constrictor that mangles its victims unit they’re dry!”

“I think that’s quite enough!”

Her husband’s voice was soft but determined and Belle whirled around, her eyes wide with surprise as rush of affection washed over her.

“It’s a rental contract…” he added. “Merely a business arrangement, Mr. French.”

“Don’t you start with me,” Moe sneered, rounding up on Rumplestiltskin now. “You’re nothing but a pathetic worm, a marionette to her whims… No backbone… not man enough to stand up to her… You’re the worst kind of coward!”

At the harsh, lashing words, her husband shrunk back and Belle’s happiness instantly turned to anger.

“Don’t you dare!” she hissed at the man who wasn’t her father, taking few steps towards him. “Don’t you dare to speak to him like that! That’s my husband you’re talking to and no-one has the right to say such things to him!”

Moe French laughed derisively. “No one but you,” he mocked. “You’ve complained and griped about him for years and years on end. You’ve said more horrible things about him than anyone else in this town!”

He was speaking nothing but the truth and the words hit her like a blow. Stealing one glance at Rumplestiltskin she noticed his face had gone chalk white and between the two men who meant so much to her, the urge to protect her husband won out.

“Leave! Right now!” She demanded, gripping the handle of the door firmly. “And never, ever come to our house again!”

And before Moe French could make a reply she’d slammed the door in his face, the stained glass window in the door rattling from the force she’d used.

When she turned around her husband was avoiding her eyes, staring awkwardly at his feet instead, the line of his shoulders tense.   
“I’ll head back to the pawnshop for a few hours…” he spoke quietly, his eyes flickering briefly over her face. “There’s some inventory I need to finish…”

Her heart sank at his words and the adrenaline that had been pumping through her veins seconds earlier now gave way to such a feeling of dejection that tears sprang in her eyes. She wanted to plead him to stay with her, if only she thought it would help. For the past few days he had spend more time at home and despite everything she had cherished the flicker of hope that perhaps not all was lost yet.

Moe French’s cruel, hurtful words had set everything back.

“If you must…” she answered resignedly, her voice cracking at the words. In an attempt to pull herself together she gave him a small smile. “Thank you for standing up for me.”

He looked startled at her words, his brow frowning as if he was contemplating his next words. “You stood up for me too… You never did that before…”

Guilt squeezed her heart at his words, because she knew all too well how true they were. If anything, in the past when anyone had insulted him in her presence, she had added to his humiliation with a few derisive remarks of her own.

“I know… and I’m sorry…” It was such a small, meager apology in the face of everything she had done to him.

And she was so tired. So endlessly, helplessly tired of the hurt, of missing him, of regretting what they had become.

“Belle…” He took a step closer towards her, his eyes looking more clearly at her now. “Why did you do that? For the past couple of weeks you’ve been so… unlike your usual self…”

A raw sob escaped her throat at his words. In his cursed perception, the cruel, vindictive woman he was married to was the real her. How was she ever going to explain this to him?

“I… I know what I was like before…” she started with difficulty. “But I’m not like that… not anymore. This… _change_ … is real. I know you probably won’t believe me, or that it doesn’t even matter anymore at this point… but… I’m truly sorry for what I was before…”   
Her voice caught in her throat as she watched his eyes go wide with shock.

He wouldn’t believe her… after twenty-eight years a tearful apology wasn’t going to make a difference anymore.

“You loathe me,” he stated matter-of-factly. “You cannot stand the sight of me.”

“No!” She shook her head so vehemently that the tears started to roll down over her cheek. “I…” She couldn’t tell him again that she loved him. The last time she did that he hadn’t spoken to her for weeks.

“I care about you… I truly do… and I want to save our marriage….”

_Their farce of a marriage that was beyond saving._

He took another step closer, so close now that she could see the little specks of gold in his brown eyes.

“Is that truly what you want?” he asked, his voice barely more than a hoarse whisper.   
His fingertips brushed her cheek and he looked at her with a dazed expression in his eyes, almost like he was under a spell.

Not trusting her voice to speak, she nodded emphatically.

He was still gazing at her in disbelief, even as he closed the distance between them and leaned in, brushing his lips over hers.

Her whole body startled to tingle at the feel of his lips on hers and she had to stop herself from burrowing herself into his arms.

His kiss was chaste and hesitant and over all too quickly and when his eyes searched hers again, his gaze was fraud with dread.

Lifting a shaking hand, Belle cradled the side of his head in her palm, her fingers burying themselves in the soft strands, hoping the gesture would tell him what she didn’t yet dare to put in words.

His body sagged in relief under her touch, the worry lifting from his eyes as he mirrored her smile.

“Belle…” Pulling her closer, he kissed her again, more determined this time and Belle finally allowed herself to relax in his arms.

* * *

 

Making their way up the stairway, their progress slowed by their kisses, Belle couldn’t help the sense of deja-vu she experienced, the history of a few weeks ago repeating itself.

She wouldn’t ruin it this time.

Responding eagerly to his kisses, she pulled him into the bedroom before attacking the three-piece suit he was wearing.  She couldn’t tell him that she loved him, but she would do everything in her power to show it to him.

He sank down on the side of the bed, pulling her with him in his lap, his hands going up to the fastenings on the back of her dress.    
Through half-closed eyes, Belle noticed that the room was dim. In their hurry to get inside neither of them had bothered to switch on the light and outside the sun had already set, casting dark shadows through the room.

“Wait,” she breathed, pulling away slightly. “For just one second…” She stroked his face tenderly, reassuring him that she wasn’t even thinking of changing her mind. Holding his gaze she got up from his lap and walked backwards to the wall were the light switch was. Flicking it on the room was suddenly bathing in light.

Then she walked to the nightstand on his side of the bed and turned the lamp on, never once breaking eye-contact with him. He followed her with heated eyes as she walked around the bed and flicked on the light on her side and swallowed noticeably as she walked back towards him, sinking down in his lap once more.

His arms immediately went up around her again and between heated kisses they manage to divest each other of their clothing.

Her heart was almost bursting with relief and love for him and she couldn’t hold back the sob as he lowered her on the soft mattress, covering her body with his own, making her feel safe and loved.

He still seemed dazed, mapping her body with his hands and his lips, occasionally whispering incomprehensible words against her skin.

_“I love you too, Rumplestiltskin,_ ” her mind whispered. _“I love you so much…”_

So afraid she was of blurting out her feelings for him once more and ruining this beautiful moment, that she bit her lower lip, almost to the point that she was drawing blood.

_“I’ll never let anyone hurt you, my love._

_I will never hurt you again.”_

Her husband was wrapped around her, he was all she could see, feel, hear, smell and taste and it was everything she had yearned for in the cold, lonely weeks behind her.

Warm lips closed around her mistreated lower lip, his tongue gently soothing the mark she’d left there.

“My Belle…” The hoarsely whispered words were all she could decipher and her heart sang.

_“Yours. Always.”_


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ana prompted: Belle could find Rumple in his shop (after the incident with Ashley) and he would be freaking scared that she might tell him that he was even too weak to defend himself but instead she comforts him and stuff.

In many ways it was just like after they had first gotten together at the Dark Castle. After her impulsive attempt to break his curse by kissing him at Regina’s suggestion he had tried to throw her out of the castle, but she had been equally adamantly refused to leave, claiming that he was just afraid to love again, sticking to that opinion even when he continued to snark and snarl at her in the weeks that followed.

Only then he began to accept that she wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t leave him and slowly but surely he had started to open up to her. He’d told her about his father, about the Ogre wars and how he had hobbled himself to be able to return to his son.   
He had told her about how his marriage to Milah had turned sour after his return - a match that hadn’t been a very happy one to begin with and as he shared more and more of his past with her, she had finally began to really understand.

Up until then her words and her firm belief that he was afraid had been only that… words. A naive conviction, astute in itself, but lacking the wisdom of experience. Back then she had been so young, so much in love and so eager to believe that their story just needed a hero and True Love’s kiss to work itself out.

It wasn’t until he started to talk and she started to listen that she realized that he wasn't just afraid. Her Rumplestiltskin, the Dark One, the most powerful wizard in all the realms was at his core a deeply wounded man who had centuries ago convinced himself that he was wholly and completely unlovable. The hurt his father, the war, Milah, Cora and the curse had inflicted on him had left gaping, festering marks on his soul.

 He wasn’t _just_  afraid to love again… he was downright incapable of trusting himself to love or let anyone love him.

So she told him over and over and _over_  how much she loved him, pretending that he looked a little less startled every time she did so.  Because of the curse and his quest to find Baelfire kissing was out of the question for them, but as the weeks wore on she found a thousand little ways to let him know without words what was in her heart and it was only then that she’d discovered his secret.

Because as frightened and broken as he was, she had never met anyone who was as starved for affection as he was.  

Every night she joined him as he sat behind his spinning wheel, curling up on the sofa with a book of her own. At his confused look, she told him lightly that she enjoyed being near him and ignored the look of baffled wonderment that crossed his face at her words.   
It was around that same time that she started to take her duties as his caretaker serious. Until then the whole concept of her being his maid had been mostly a farce since the Dark Castle was mostly self-providing and there was no real need for her to scrub floors or slave over preparing meals.

But the man has spend most of his life not having a real home and she was determined to rectify that. So she filled the Great Hall with flowers and herbs, arranged armchairs around the fireplace and made the place comfortable with candles, rugs and cushions. Her nesting instincts too were met with bewilderment, but it didn’t take long before he could be compelled to leave his spinning wheel in favor of having her read to him and it definitely wasn’t her imagination that he inched closer towards her every evening, not quite daring the touch her yet, but unable to stay away.

She even tried to cook for him, but soon discovered that her ill-fated attempts would rather fuel his belief that she wanted him dead than convince him of her love for him, so she eventually gave up on the notion.

They had danced around each other and their feelings for weeks, both of them too scared and too nervous to take the final plunge.  Then one evening, as they’d been sitting in front of the roaring fire, him teasing her mercilessly about her latest kitchen disaster, making her laugh until she had tears in her eyes he suddenly froze halfway through his good-natured tirade and stared at her.

Mesmerized by the raw look of soft wonder on his face she had gazed back until he had lifted a shaking hand to her face and brushed his knuckles reverently over her cheek.

“I love you too, Belle…”

He’d appeared as surprised at his own words as she had been and then she had launched herself into his arms, tackling the both of them to the ground in her enthusiasm.

After that night it was like a dam had broke inside of him. Once the lid was off, all of the love and affection he had kept bottled up inside him for so long came pouring out and she basked in it, realizing for the first time just how much she craved to be loved so wholeheartedly herself. Rumplestiltskin loved her and as hurt and damaged as his heart was, his sheer capacity to love was untouched by the curse.   
There was nothing he wouldn’t do to make her happy or ensure her comfort. He treated her like she was made of the finest porcelain, more fragile and delicate than the chipped cup he’d insisted on using ever since her first day at the castle and in loving her he wouldn’t risk anything that could potentially hurt her or upset her.

She had always known there was a man behind the beast, but he still turned out to be endlessly more loving and caring than she could have envisioned.  He made her feel safe and after years of trying to be brave and strong and everything else she expected herself to be, she gave herself over to him as much as he was giving himself to her.

* * *

 

Now that they were reconciled again, she saw glimpses of the Rumplestiltskin she remembered, even if he was still under the effects of the curse.   He seemed to have accepted her radically altered behavior towards him without requiring any further explanation.  And the tiny bud of confidence that had blossomed inside him during the night after Moe French’ visit did wonders for their relationship. He moved back into their shared bedroom and started to take a little more initiative in spending time with her.  He was still hesitant and guarded, but at least now there was a shimmer of hope in his eyes whenever he looked at her, as if he was starting to believe that he wouldn’t be rebuked if he initiated a kiss or an embrace.

And once she wrapped her arms around him and responded to him with eager enthusiasm, he lost most of his reserve and poured all of his love into her once more.  

She was happy and grateful that he still loved her, even despite of the curse, but sometimes a worrisome, insistent voice in the back of her mind warned her that at this point he rather loved her because of the curse.  It was his cursed personality that made him cling to her, made him still crave her affection and approval.  

Once Rumplestiltskin, the clever, cunning, powerful wizard broke free, that love would be revealed for the lie that it was.

And for all of her bravery and determination, Belle couldn’t bring herself to let him go. So she ignored the curse, ignored Regina’s suspicious stares and ignored the growing dread that now constantly lived in the pit of her stomach, knowing she was living on borrowed time.   
And instead she curled up against him every night, savoring the feel of his arms around her and pretended that she didn’t have to give him up.

* * *

 

A fortnight later he failed to come home from the pawnshop around dinner time. She tried to call him several times on his cellphone and at the shop, but he never picked up. Waiting at the dining table until dinner had gone cold, her stomach twisted itself into knots of fear and anxiety as a dozen different scenarios ran through her head.

He was once again pulling away from her because he couldn’t believe that she had truly changed.

He had realized once more what a cruel and vindictive monster she had been to him and it had finally dawned on him that he was far better off without her.

He had met Emma Swan and regained his memories and he know wanted to have nothing to do with her anymore.

Eventually she couldn’t bear the uncertainty anymore. Even if after tonight their marriage and everything that held them together unravelled, it was better than this not knowing. Shrugging into her coat she grabbed the keys of her car and drove through the dark, deserted streets of Storybrooke towards the pawnshop, her heard sinking as she noticed that the shop was dark as well and that the sign on the door read ‘closed.’

Not really knowing what else to do with herself, she got out of the car and advanced the shop’s windows, peering inside and trying to figure out where he could have gone to if he wasn’t at the shop. She was barely able to make anything out in the darkness of the shop and was about to turn around and call the Sheriff’s department when something caught her eye. One of the antique lamps he had on display had been knocked over and was lying on the floor. Frowning in worry and confusion,

Belle pressed her nose against the glass, squinting her eyes to get a view that was as clear as possible. From where she was standing she could barely make out the counter, but there was an odd shadow sticking out from the side.

‘A foot!’ she realized with a gasp of horror and then she stopped thinking and simply acted. Rushing back to her car, she took a heavy umbrella from the trunk and ran back to the shop, cursing herself for never insisting that Rumple gave her a spare key.   
Lifting the umbrella above her head, she brought the handle down on the glass door with as much force as she could muster, causing the windows to clatter. It took three attempts, but finally the glass shattered and she carefully reached inside to turn the lock.

The broken shreds of glass crunched underneath her heels as she dashed behind the counter to find Rumplestiltskin lying unconsciously on the ground, blood oozing from a small cut on his forehead and his eyes looking oddly red and irritated.

While panic seized her heart, she dropped to her knees besides him.  “Rumple… Rumplestiltskin… wake up!!” she pleaded, shaking his shoulder.

He groaned and shifted on the hard floor and attempted to open his eyes, but immediately closed them again, before pressing the heels of his hands to his closed eyelids, hissing in agony.

Whoever had hurt him must have used something on his eyes, she realized and with gentle fingers she tried to pry his hands away from his face.

“Just let me see…” she cooed softly. “You don’t have to open your eyes, but I just want to see…”

“It was… the Boyd girl…” he said with considerable difficulty. “She sprayed something in my face…it stung terribly… then she hit me across the head with something… and I don’t remember anything after that…I'm sorry, Belle...”

Pepper-spray… she’d figured as much.

“Sh…” she comforted him, trying to help him to get to his feet. “You might have a concussion. And we need to rinse out your eyes. You have a sink in you backroom, don’t you?”

“Aye…” he mumbled, scrambling to his feet, looking confused and distressed. His cane was nowhere in sight, so instead she wrapped her arms around his waist and shoulder, urging him to lean into her, her heart doing a happy little stutter when he pulled her close and rested his head against hers.

He was barely able to see anything, so she guided him to the backroom and led him to the sink. Taking a clean cloth she urged him to lean over the sink so she could apply generous amounts of water to his poor, mistreated eyes.

He let her fuss over him without voicing objections and despite her worry and her anger towards the person who had hurt him so, she relished in this rare opportunity to take care of him.   
It took almost twenty minutes before he was able to keep his eyes open again and she winched at the red-rimmed, bloodshot sight of the beautiful brown eyes she had grown to love so much.

The cut on his forehead appeared to be superficial, but she was worried by the bruise that accompanied it.  The fear that he could have a concussion reared its head again and she vowed to keep a close eye on him for the next twenty-four hours.

Who on earth who do such a thing to him?

Then she remembered his earlier words. “You said it was Ashley Boyd?” she then asked, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. Ashley Boyd was a young girl, a few months pregnant - although… Belle frowned…

Ashley Boyd had been pregnant for as long as she could remember and that was just ridiculous.   
Then her own memories clicked in place with her cursed once and she was only barely able to prevent herself from gasping out loud. Ashley Boyd was Cinderella and it had been the deal that Rumple had made with Cinderella, back in the Enchanted Forest that had led to his imprisonment and the casting of the curse. But what had Ashley been doing here tonight?

“She was looking for something…” her husband told her. “Papers of some kind… but I didn’t know what she was talking about… I think after she knocked me out she ram-shacked the shop though…”

Belle remembered the mess the shop had been in upon her arrival, but right now that was the least of her worries. Cinderella had been looking for the contract, assuming that Rumplestiltskin still had it. Only the young woman had been mistaken, because after Regina had cast the curse and locked Rumple up inside his cursed persona, she herself had personally made sure all the papers from their world were safely within her reach.

And Belle knew exactly where Cinderella’s contract was: it was sitting in one of the drawers of the file cabinet at her office, Regina having asked her years and years ago if she could keep some papers for her.

And there was only one person who could have told Ashley Boyd where to look for the contract and intentionally send her to the wrong place.

Belle’s insides grew cold when the hard reality dawned on her.

Regina was on to them.


End file.
